Featured Exhibition: Lightness and Boldness. Goya’s Drawings

Ligereza y atrevimiento. Dibujos de Goya, Centro Botín, Santander. Closes 24 September 2017.
One of the first exhibitions in the recently opened Renzo Piano designed Centro Botín, this show is curated by the Prado’s Head of Drawings and Prints, José Manuel Matilla, and the Chief Curator of the Goya and 18th-century Art Department, Manuela Mena. The exhibition includes 80 drawings, from the Prado’s holdings of some 520, selected as representative of the different periods of Goya’s artistic activity from 1796 to his death in 1828. Also shown are preparatory drawings for a selection of prints from his series, Sueños, Caprichos, Desastres de la guerra, Tauromaquia and Disparates. This exhibition is the result of an ambitious research and cataloguing project based on the drawings of Francisco de Goya, thanks to the collaboration agreement entered into by the Fundación Botín and Prado Museum in 2014. The first volume of the catalogue raisonné is due to appear later in 2017 and a larger exhibition is provisionally scheduled at the Prado in 2019.